Chapter 14

Donna Gets A Makeover

The Office of the Secretary of State for Defence.

Houses of Parliament.

Margaret Thompson exuded a commanding presence with her tall and stately figure. She had silver-gray hair, cut in a neat, shoulder-length bob that framed her sharp, intelligent features. Her piercing blue eyes conveyed a sense of authority and determination, often reflecting the depth of her experience and insight. Margaret's style was impeccably professional, favouring tailored suits in dark, neutral colours that complement her dignified demeanour. Her posture was always straight, and she carried herself with a composed and confident air, befitting her influential role in Parliament.

She was a prominent and seasoned member of Parliament, renowned for her extensive influence over defence and security policies. With years of experience in the political arena, she had built a reputation as a steadfast and knowledgeable leader. Margaret's deep understanding of national security issues and her strategic acumen made her a key player in shaping the country's defence strategies. Her authoritative presence and decisive nature often placed her at the forefront of critical legislative discussions related to defence. Despite the often contentious nature of defence policies, Margaret maintained a calm and composed demeanour, earning her respect across party lines.

John Davies, Under Secretary for Defence Procurement, knocked on the open door. 'Madam Secretary, do you have a moment?'

Margaret Thompson looked up from her paperwork. 'John, of course. Come in.'

Davies entered the spacious office which was divided into several functional areas: the main desk area, a meeting corner, a lounge area, and a display section. He closed the door behind him before sitting down. 'I've been reviewing some recent activities of Torchwood and, frankly, I'm worried. They're operating with little to no oversight, and given their access to advanced technology, it's a matter of national security.'

'Thompson narrowed her eyes. 'I've heard rumours, but nothing concrete,' she told him. James Montgomery had mentioned some concerns. 'Do you have any evidence?'

Davies slid a folder across the sleek mahogany desk. 'This dossier contains instances where Torchwood acted unilaterally, bypassing governmental protocols. If this continues, we risk a major incident, one that could undermine our defence strategies.'

Thompson flipped through the dossier. It was a very selective list of operations where Torchwood had taken action on its own volition, many of them from the "bad old days" when Yvonne Hartman had been in control, but also where Torchwood was the only agency with the ability to act. There was no mention of the many joint operations with the police or UNIT. 'This is . . . troubling. Have you spoken to the Home Secretary about this?'

'Yes, and he's supportive of raising the issue in the next Cabinet meeting. But we need the backing of the Defence sector to really make an impact.'

Thompson nodded. If the Home Secretary was supporting the issue, then so would she. 'Consider it done. I'll review this in detail and we'll formulate a plan to address this with the President.'

'Thank you, Ma'am.'

['There's a fiery, red headed woman at the door, Rose,'] Donna-The-House announced.

'Ooh, let her in would you, Donna,' Rose replied.

['Hiya Sis,'] Donna-The-House said, as Donna Templeton climbed the steps to the house. ['Rose is in the Living Room.']

'Thanks Sweetheart,' Donna replied as she entered the house.

As Donna walked down the hall, Rose came out of the living room on the right, and Donna-The-Robot came out of the kitchen, which was straight ahead.

'How was your journey?' Rose asked as they hugged.

'Fine. I came in with Shaun,' Donna explained. 'He's got a Saturday mornin' meetin' with a client in the office, and I got one of those fancy driverless taxi things . . . They're brilliant!'

'I know. I use them to get to work now,' Rose told her.

'Shaun said he'll come over after his meetin', if that's alright.'

'Of course it is,' Rose told her. 'Y'know yer both welcome here anytime.'

['Hey Sis, how are ya?'] Donna-The-Robot asked, as she had a hug also.

'I'm good, thanks. So, today's the big day for you then,' Donna said.

Donna-The-Robot held Donna's shoulders and looked into her eyes with her visual interface. ['Thanks for doin' this . . . Are you sure about it?']

'What, gettin' me kit off for a mate? Course I am,' Donna said with a laugh. She looked around. 'Where's his nibs? He's not goin' to be watchin' is he?'

Rose laughed and rubbed Donna's arm. 'He's down in his lab settin' up the equipment, and I'll be operatin' it.'

'That's alright then,' Donna said. 'Shall we get on with it then?'

'Yep. Follow me,' Rose said, and went through the doorway under the stairs to the basement.

John's workshop was at the front of the house, below the living room. The high level window let natural light in from the parking space where Delores the Delorian was parked. The TARDIS was parked in one corner, sitting on the grid electricity diverter, which powered the house from its Eye of Harmony, whilst patiently waiting to be off, exploring the universe when the family had some down time.

'Ah, Donna. How are you?' John said as they entered the lab.

'Hi, John,' Donna greeted, as they kissed cheeks. 'I'm fine thanks and rarin' to go.'

'Oh good. Well, the Dermal Replicator is all set up,' he indicated a new piece of equipment which resembled a transparent cylindrical tanning booth. 'So, Donna . . .'

'Yeah,' both Donna's said together, and then looked at each other.

John groaned. 'Oh this is going to get confusing . . . Donna-The-Human, you nip into the TARDIS with Rose and get ready. Donna, the soon to be android, you have a seat on the stool and I'll prepare your exoskeleton.'

['I bet you say that to all the girls,'] Donna-The-Robot said with a lopsided smile on her visual interface.

Donna-The-Human followed Rose into the TARDIS to change into a bathrobe. Donna-The-Robot sat on the stool, and John proceeded to spray her black, carbon fibre "skin" with a flesh coloured, rubberised kevlar paste.

['Can I just say,'] Donna-The-Robot started. ['Thanks for doin' this for me.']

John looked up and smiled. 'It's our pleasure, Donna. It's the least Rose and myself can do for you, after everything you've done for us in the past, and continue to do for us and the kids. And now I've got a life model to work with, it'll be a piece of cake.'

'Did someone mention cake?' Donna-The-Human asked as she stepped out of the TARDIS in a white bathrobe.

'Tea and cake all round when we've finished I think,' John said with a grin. 'Right, just stand up for me and I'll spray your bum.'

Donna-The-Robot stood up and John sprayed the final part of her exoskeleton. 'There we are then. I'll leave you to it.'

John left the lab and closed the door behind him. Rose guided Donna-The-Human over to the booth, and slipped the bathrobe off her shoulders.

['Is that what I'm gonna look like?'] Donna-The-Robot asked, as Donna-The-Human stood there, naked. This made Donna-The-Human a bit self conscious, and she put her arm across her breasts, and used the other hand to cover her "lady garden".

'Er, yeah. It's OK isn't it? I mean, my bum's not too big or anythin'?' Donna-The-Human asked.

Donna-The-Robot laughed. ['No Sis. I'm thinkin' I'm gonna be lookin' pretty good.']

'Oh, right . . . well, thank you very much.'

Rose laughed at their exchange. 'OK, Donna, come and stand in here.'

Donna-The-Human leaned forward and looked inside. 'It is safe isn't it?'

'Absolutely. It's just goin' to scan the contours of your body,' Rose reassured her. Rose gathered her hair off her shoulders and arranged it above her head, holding it in place with a hair claw. 'Now, stand with your feet on the marks and arms out to the side.'

Donna stood with her feet just over shoulder width apart and looked down at her body. 'How detailed is this scan goin' to be? I mean, yer goin' to be able to see all my lady bits.'

['And what's wrong with that?'] Donna-The-Robot asked. ['I want lady bits as well.']

'And what about my boobs? D'you think they're saggin' a bit?'

Rose rolled her eyes and smiled. 'Donna, they're fine. Now just hold still for about thirty seconds.'

Rose closed the booth door and went over to the computer on the worktop, where she initiated the scan. A soft, red light bar moved down Donna's body, and a rendered image appeared on the computer monitor.

'All done,' Rose called out. 'Out y'come.'

Donna-The-Human lowered her arms and opened the door, stepping out and accepting the bathrobe from Rose. She looked over at the high resolution monitor. 'Did it go alright?'

'Yeah, great.' Rose went over to the computer and used the mouse to move the image around. 'There ya are in all your glory. Every mole, freckle,' Rose gave her a cheeky grin. 'Nipple . . .'

Donna blushed. 'Oh-my-god . . . you weren't kiddin' about the detail,' she said as she looked at the intimate area below her waist.

Rose turned to Donna-The-Robot. 'Your turn. Are ya ready?'

Donna-The-Robot grinned. ['I was built ready.'] She stepped into the booth and assumed the same position as Donna-The-Human.

'So what happens now then?' Donna-The-Human asked as Rose closed the door.

'It's a bit like a 3D printer,' Rose explained as she activated the printing process. 'It will start at Donna's feet, remodellin' the paste John sprayed on, using the mask of your body.'

Donna looked at her spiritual twin and realised her face was a high resolution display. 'Hang on, what about her face?'

'Ah, yeah. John's got somethin' special planned for that,' Rose said mysteriously. 'It's goin' to take a while, so why don't ya go an' get dressed.'

Donna tilted her head to one side and gave Rose an enquiring look. Rose just gave her an enigmatic smile in return. 'Hmm, OK. See you in a minute.' She turned and headed towards the TARDIS.

'Oh, and bring the bathrobe with you,' Rose suggested. She nodded towards the booth. 'Someone's gonna need it when we're finished.'

When Donna emerged from the TARDIS in her jeans, white blouse, and trainers, Donna-The-Robot had a pair of human looking legs, hips, and navel. Half an hour later, Donna's naked body was stepping out of the booth, with a robot's head on her shoulders. Rose handed her the bathrobe.

'Hang on,' Donna-The-Human said. 'Give us a twirl first.'

['Eh?'] Donna-The-Robot queried.

'Y'know, to check the accuracy,' Donna-The-Human said sheepishly.

['Oh. Yeah, OK.'] She held her arms out and did a slow rotation.

'Nice arse,' Rose said with a cheeky grin.

'Oi!' the two Donna's said together. But Donna-The-Human, leaned back and sneaked a quick look.

'Although . . .'

Donna-The-Robot saw her looking. ['Oi!'] She put the bathrobe on and gave her a wry smile.

['We're all decent down here, Love,'] Rose thought to her husband.

['That'll be a first,'] he thought back with a cheeky grin. ['On my way.']

John entered his workshop, and made his way over to the group by the computer. 'Happy with the result?' he asked Donna-The-Robot.

Donna-The-Robot lifted up her hands and manipulated them in the air in front of her, looking at the nails and the fold lines. ['It's brilliant. Thank you.']

'Right, now for the tricky bit,' he said.

['My face,'] Donna-The-Robot replied.

John nodded and opened a metal briefcase on the worktop. Inside was an oval shaped object with two eyeballs and a row of teeth. It looked like a mask you'd wear to one of Rose's mother's Halloween parties. 'I've got to turn this,' he lifted out the face. 'Into this.' He held the face next to Donna-The-Human's face.

'How'yer goin' to do that then?' Donna-The-Human asked.

'You'll see,' John replied as he sat Donna-The-Robot on the stool, and used his sonic screwdriver to start removing her facial visual display. As he worked, he started to explain.

'Do you remember the last "girls night in"?' he asked, referring to the Blue Watch Babes weekly get together at Gwen O'Toole's apartment.

'What? When Rose asked me to wear that weird headset with the cameras on it?' Donna-The-Human asked.

'That's the one. Well, those cameras were recording and digitizing your facial expressions, and logging when you used each expression,' John explained. 'That face has an array of actuators all over it which will reproduce those expressions, and a number of sub-processors will control those actuators.'

He gently pulled the digital facial display forward and carefully unplugged all the data cable connections, placing the now redundant face on the worktop. 'Goodbye Donna-The-Robot, hello Donna-the-Android.' He picked up the animatronic face and started to reconnect the data and power cables. Once that was done, he carefully aligned the face on the front of the head and again used his sonic to fix it in place.

He stood back and smiled at Rose and Donna-The-Human in turn. 'Here goes.'

He changed the setting on the sonic and activated the face. The small shutters over the eyes and mouth had closed when the data cables had been connected, but the eyelids slowly opened to reveal a pair of blue eyes. They blinked, then blinked again. They looked left, then right and blinked again. The array of micro-shutters over the teeth started to open, and formed a smile, which even without the covering skin, was unmistakably Donna's.

'This . . . Ooh,' Donna, the now Android, started to speak when she noticed something different. She opened her mouth and stuck out a tongue. 'A 'ongue. I 'ot a 'ongue.' She put her tongue back in her mouth. 'This-is-brilliant,' she said, giving them a double thumbs up with her new thumbs.

'You're telling me,' John said as he watched all the actuators working. 'We can see your happy face, now look surprised . . . shocked . . . sad . . . annoyed, oh I know that look.'

'Oi,' Donna-the-Android and Donna-The-Human said together.

'Perfect. All the processors seem to be calibrated correctly. Let's get your face on,' John said.

John opened another metal briefcase, which had a circular device with hundreds of tiny hexagonal pins, forming a flat surface. Inside the lid of the case, was a screen which displayed Donna's face, taken from the cameras used to record her expressions.

'Oh, I remember this,' Rose said. 'Chrissie used it to produce a mask for me when I first came here, so I could go out without bein' recognised.'

Donna-the Human frowned. 'Why would y'want to do that?'

'It was when I had been pulled from my universe. I'd lost the Doctor, my home, all my friends,' Rose explained.

'And she was pining for me,' John added with a grin.

'Shut up,' Rose said playfully. 'I was feelin' vulnerable, and then the press got wind of Pete Tyler's mysterious daughter. I couldn't move without a camera bein' shoved in my face by the paparazzi.'

'Ah. So you needed a disguise until you got used to the idea of bein' . . . well, you,' Donna-The-Human realised.

Rose nodded. 'I've still got the mask upstairs in a draw. I even used it a couple of times when I was an active field agent.'

John had lifted a ring out of the case with a membrane covering it. 'Donna . . .'

'Yeah,' both Donnas answered.

John rolled his eyes. 'Look, would one of you consider changing your name?'

They looked at each other, and then looked at John. ['I suppose if I'm gettin' a new body and a new face, I could get a new name,'] Donna-the-Android said.

'Great,' John said. 'What shall we call you?'

'I don't know. I've not given it any thought.'

'What about Ann?' Donna-The-Human suggested. 'Y'know like Ann-Droid?'

'NO!' John and Rose shouted together. 'Sorry. Just, no. Not Ann.'

Donna-The-Human suddenly had a flashback from the memories she'd been given by John and Rose. It was a space station, and the Doctor had seen Rose vaporised. 'Oh-my-God! I'm so sorry you two. I didn't realise.'

Rose rubbed her upper arm. 'It's OK. You weren't to know. It's one of those things we'd rather not be reminded of.'

'Sorry,' Donna repeated, and then thought again about names 'What about Maddy then? Y'know, short for Madonna.'

'Ooh, I quite like that. Maddy,' Donna-the-Android said with a mechanical smile.

'That fits,' John said with a lopsided smile. 'Mad Donna.'

'Oi!' Donna-the-Android warned him.

'What about Audrey the Automaton,' John suggested. There was a deathly silence as the three females gave him "a look". 'Maddy it is then,' he said sheepishly. The three women looked at each other and burst out laughing.

['I'll have you know I am not changin' my name to Harriet-The-House,'] Donna-The-House told them.

John smiled to himself and shook his head. 'That's OK Donna, you look nothing like Maddy or Donna-The-Human.' He turned back to Maddy. 'Right. Maddy, have a seat on the stool and hold still. I'm just going to get the base impression for the face.' He pushed the ring forwards, and the membrane covered Maddy's mechanical face. 'Lovely. Now for the clever bit.'

John touched the image of Donna's face on the screen, and the disk started to morph inwards, forming a negative impression of Donna's face. He then placed the template of Maddy's face into the "negative" impression. He pressed a button, and after thirty seconds, a green light illuminated to indicate the mask was ready. He removed the template, which now had Donna's face on it.

'Oh, look at that!' Donna exclaimed, as she looked at her own relaxed, serene face.

John peeled the mask off the template and held it with his hand inside it. 'Right, let's get this on.'

He carefully positioned the mask over the centre of Maddy's face, and started to smooth it down. The edges of the mask clung to the skin of the head and formed an invisible seal. John stepped back and frowned, his head tilted to one side, his hand rubbing his chin.

'What?' Maddy asked worriedly.

'Hmmm,' John replied.

'What, what's wrong?'

John lowered his hand from his chin and started to grin. He couldn't wind her up any longer. 'Nothing. Nothing's wrong. In fact, I'd say everything is right.'

Maddy jumped off the stool. 'Mirror. Quick!'

Rose had remembered what it was like to get a new face, and had brought a hand mirror from her dressing table earlier. She picked it up from the worktop and handed it to her.

Maddy just sat there on the stool, staring open mouthed at her reflection. She looked up at John, her eyes blinking, as though blinking back tears. She looked again at her reflection, turning her head to the left, then the right. Rose and Donna wiped their wet cheeks, not realising how emotional this moment would be.

'Hang on,' Donna said, leaning forwards and frowning. 'Are you cryin'?' she asked Maddy.

Maddy reached up and touched her cheek and then rubbed her finger and thumb together. 'I am . . . I'm crying,' she sobbed. She looked up at John. 'You made me cry.'

John opened his mouth to refute her statement, and closed it again whilst he thought about it. 'Yeah, I suppose I did,' he agreed. 'You'll have to put saline eye drops in your eyes to top up the reservoir though if you want to do it again.'

Maddy sobbed a laugh, put down the hand mirror, and hugged John. 'Has anyone ever told you you're amazin'?'

John released the hug and waggled his eyebrows. 'It has been mentioned.'

Rose came over and kissed him on the cheek. 'You are amazin', and you've done an amazin' job, but now it's our turn.'

John frowned in confusion. 'Eh?'

Rose nodded sideways towards Maddy. 'Head, billiard ball, bald as . . .'

'Ah, right. That's your department,' John agreed. 'I'll leave you to it.'

Rose took Maddy's hand. 'Come on Don . . . sorry, Maddy. We need to go into the TARDIS. I've got this high tech . . . I was goin' to say wig, but this is more than that. I picked it up from this bazzar once on this asteroid.'

'That sounds interestin'. Lead on.'

In the living room of the TARDIS, Rose had fitted the nano-fibre hair piece on Maddy's head, and was using a handset to give her a variety of hair styles, colours, and lengths, whilst Maddy looked at the results in a full length mirror.

'What about blonde? They say blondes have more fun,' Maddy suggested.

'I certainly have a lot of fun,' Rose told her, selecting her own hair style and colour.

'Hmmm. I'm not sure it's me. I've always felt ginger.'

'Well be ginger then,' Donna said.

'But then we'd be identical twins, an' that'd cause a hell of a lot of confusion,' Maddy pointed out.

Donna gave her a wicked grin. 'And a hell of a lot of fun.'

Rose flicked through a few more colour options. 'What about one closer to red then?' She selected a chestnut brown, in a full bodied, collar length style with a slight wave.

'Oh wow!' Donna said as the hair reconfigured itself. 'That definitely suits you.'

'Watcha think?' Rose asked as Maddy stared at herself in the mirror.

Maddy slipped off the bathrobe and continued to stare. She turned left and right, ran her hands down her waist and hips, before lifting up her boobs and letting them drop back into place. She had a big grin on her face. 'I think I've found my look.'

'Good. Now let's find yer some clothes, you exhibitionist,' Donna said.

'Hey, if you've got it, flaunt it, and I've never had it to flaunt before,' Maddy explained.

Rose laughed as she led them out of the living room, heading for the TARDIS wardrobe.